Terf Safe - Tumblr Posts

Okay, so I have a sleep disorder (hence the sloth in the name) and I follow this sleep advocacy group/non profit on Instagram which of course, this month, felt the need to "highlight voices from the LGBTQ+ community" who struggle with sleep disorders. So today they posted about this one girl and she writes "I identify as queer and bisexual, and as disabled."

I'm sorry what? Are any of those things something you can "identify" as? Que*r is a slur, and even if it wasn't, what would it even mean? Like why is it a separate thing from your sexual orientation? Which by the way, that's what bisexuality is: a sexual orientation. Not an identity. And disabled, how tf do you identify as disabled? You either have a disability, or you don't. And then underneath that she writes "I have narcolepsy".

Are you sure? Maybe you just identify as narcoleptic. But that would sound ridiculous. 🙄

What the actual fuck. She wasn’t even remotely transphobic, she just wanted to stay true to her beliefs and not expose her hair to the male SEX. The XY chromosome combo. She's not "misgendering" anyone. She didn’t use the "wrong" pronouns or anything like that. All she did was defend her personal belief based in her religion that she keep her hair covered in front of biological males. Funny how Islam is super woke to all the leftists until it conflicts with all their gender-bending philosophy and self-identifying trend.

Aaand everyone’s calling her transphobic

The most perfect metaphor.

me: eggs are not vegetables.

the discourse: *EGGS ARE REAL.*

me: sure but they aren’t vegetables.

the discourse: *EGGS ARE VALID.*

me: yeah but they still aren’t vegetables.

the discourse: *EGGS ARE DESERVING OF LOVE AND SUPPORT.*

me: I guess so but they’re still not vegetables.

the discourse: *EGGS. ARE. VEGETABLES.*

I really haven't had time to argue about something this stupid, but I have a school break, so why not at least try to explain it to everyone ranting at me about how I made a personal choice not to dress correctly.

@alethiaii "It's not patriarchy, nobody pointing a weapon at you to force you to wear them during winter, it's you not using your brain."

Right because if you aren't forced at gunpoint to do something, obviously it was a choice made in a vacuum with absolutely no subconscious psychological and societal pressure created by industries and ideologies that continuously create an ever-changing ideal woman for whom subconscious biases create a peer pressure to conform to, right? None of that exists I guess. I should have just walked in to high school in Men's clothing with no makeup and not given a fuck, right? The way my peers would have treated me in response to my refusal to conform would have had zero effects on my mental health, right? In a world full of liberal feminists where the message I constantly received was one claiming that the more skin they showed, the more makeup they wore, the more they made their "own choice" to shave their legs and pravtice their power walk so as to be "sexy and empowered", in a world where I was taught having power meant that your stilettos and eyeliner were "sharp enough to kill a man" as we used to joke, how was I, as a 15 to 18 year old at the time, supposed to have responded to that message?

And if you think this type of effect doesn't happen between women, allow me to post some backup info and thoughts I saw in a recent post:

@siryouarebeingmocked Sure let's run with the idea that I was referring to the past 3 centuries. The context of my post clearly shows that I was talking about recent history when I said a lean or skinny figure is considered the ideal for women, so let's take a look the last few decades beauty ideals in terms of weight and body type for women, as these are the concepts that would have influenced my thought process as a high schooler in the mid 2010s. Here is some more information on that particular concept and how it came about over the last century.

From Viren Swami, Professor of Social Psychology, Anglia Ruskin University

"If we go back far enough in time and look at sculptures created by ancestral humans populations, we get a very different picture of what the ideal body for women may have looked like. Our ancestors inhabited environments characterised by food shortages and individuals who were able to quickly increase their body mass may have had an advantage in terms of health and even fertility. This is supported by the archaeological record of Venus figurines – such as the “Venus of Willendorf” from the late Stone Age – which suggests that between ten and 100,000 years ago, the ideal female figure was robust and round.

This was the case up until the 19th century... In the late 19th century, this started to change. An idealised image of a woman with a slight shape and a small, corseted waist, sloped shoulders, tapered fingers and delicate feet started to emerge in North America and Western Europe. Known as the “steel engraving lady”, this ideal came to be associated not only with frailty, weakness and subservience, but also with high social status and moral values.

In the 1920s, the exchange of corsets for new undergarments that bound the breasts created a flat-chested, boy-like appearance. During this era, the beauty ideal shifted to an almost exclusive focus on slenderness, requiring the use of starvation diets and “rolling machines”. It was also in the 1920s that the proliferation of mass media helped to create a standardisation of beauty ideals in North America and Western Europe. Movies and magazines, as well as Hollywood stars, presented a homogenised vision of beauty and it’s also during this period that we see the first adverts for weight loss.

By the 1940s, slender legs became the focus of beauty ideals -– emphasised with hemmed stockings and high-heeled shoes. Bust size also grew in idealised images and would soon become the dominant feature of female ideal beauty. Interestingly, researchers during this period began to document the first instances of negative body image, with women desiring smaller body sizes and larger breasts.

By the time the supermodel Twiggy debuted in the United States in 1966, the trend toward increasingly slender bodies had taken hold. Playboy centrefolds and Miss America pageant winners all showed a decrease in body weight and hip size, and an increase in waist size, bust size and height between the 1960s and 1980s. By the mid-1990s, this female beauty ideal had become synonymous with the thin ideal, which has remained at clinically underweight levels.

It is certainly true that, in the early 1980s, a more muscular ideal of female beauty emerged – exemplified by broad shoulders. In fact, shoulder pads became became the defining fashion statement of the era, known as “power dressing”. Nevertheless, the focus remained on a thin, slender body shape. Likewise, the re-emergence of particular types of exercise regimens – such as high intensity interval training and weightlifting – has resulted in a more muscular ideal for women more recently, but typically the ideal remains thin.

Another significant change that began in the 1990s was the denigration of overweight women. In popular TV, for example, overweight women were stereotypically portrayed as unintelligent, greedy, and unable to form romantic attachments. There has also been increasing focus on the health risks associated with being overweight across all media. The effect of the combination of the idealisation of thinness and the denigration of overweight has been the homogenisation of a beauty ideal that is unachievable for the majority of women.

Contemporary Western women are exposed to this thin ideal in almost every form of media – from magazines to TV shows and popular films. So it’s no surprise to learn that so many of women in the West are dissatisfied with their bodies. In one large survey of almost 10,000 women in the United States, for example, my colleagues and I found that almost 85% of respondents were dissatisfied with their current body size and wanted to be thinner.

Even more concerning is evidence that the thin ideal is now a global phenomenon, with women in most urban, developed settings – including places like India and China – reporting an idealisation of thinness and a desire to be thinner. For body image scholars, this is worrying because of the overwhelming evidence that body dissatisfaction is a risk factor for disordered eating, consideration of cosmetic surgery, and poorer psychological well-being in general. All this seems to indicate that today’s body standards are indeed becoming increasingly unattainable.

So, have we clearly established that thin and lean was pretty much the ideal body in media influencing my choices subconsciously from 2010 to 2014? I would say yes.

Moving onto the next point made by several people:

"Why did you shave in the winter?"

"Why didn't you just buy warmer clothes?"

"Why would you wear leggings when it's cold out?"

And here's your answer: because society told me that's what I should be doing. And we are right back to the toll taken on anyone's mental health who chooses to strongly stand out from the socialized status quo. (More on that in a moment).

Here is what you might call the starter pack for my high school in 2010:

And here are some photos off pinterest when you search the term "cold winter outfits"

You will notice they are ALL wearing leggings, even a decade later. But let's look at some of their gear. I mentioned the starter pack- it contains what are the target version of Ugg Brand boots. They were not very warm but all I really did was stand at the bus stop in them. Take a look at the other photos now. Many of the women, despite the leggings, have on warm, well made boots made by a brand called Sorel. How do I know they are warm? Because I have three pairs. They retail around $175 to $250 a pair. I have 5 siblings, my parents did not have the money for those kind of boots. My coats were from JCPenny or Kohl's and I didn’t discover sown coats until I was 25.

Nowadays, I wear four layers, my sorely boots, my snowpants, my Columbia down coat, my well made mittens and my hat that is warm but also supports children's cancer research (check out Love Your Melon for more info on that) and I don't give a shit about how I look. But 17 year old me? Let me just post a link from @dykemind on how the pressure of invisible forces might affect your psyche.

So yes. I wore leggings in high school when it was -20° fucking Fahrenheit to stand at the bus stop. My coat wasn't the warmest one on the planet. I wore knockoff Ugg boots and poorly applied eyeliner and skinny jeans that were tissue paper thin. And I did it because everyone else did it.

And yes, the guys still made stupid jokes when we complained about being cold. So maybe it was all just male immaturity. Maybe it was poorly made clothing. Maybe I should have spent any money I saved on warmer clothes brands which I didn't know existed. Maybe I should have snapped out of all the societal influence and made my own choices. But how many female high schoolers do you know who don't stick to the status quo for the most part?

As someone who grew up in the coldest state in the midwest, literally nothing was more annoying than guys mocking us girls growing up for "being a wimp and getting cold so easily". Like, excuse me, but I would like to see a high school aged boy to try and survive a Minnesota January after shaving all the hair off their legs and underarms, while wearing a coat that is designed not with their warmth, but with the transparency of their figure, in mind, and wearing the thin black leggings from Target or Pink or wherever. Not to mention a lean figure has always been made to be the ideal over one for women.

Has anyone watched Euphoria on HBO? Thoughts? I watched the first episode and while it is a deeply unsettling show, it portrays so much of the unique pressures gen Z is under. I'm aware it has a transgender girl in it, but I wondered what people's thoughts were on how both that and the the main character's drug addiction is portrayed and how it maybe even plays into the underlying factors that can contribute to dysphoria and drug dependence (as two separate issues).

Thoughts?

You know, I wouldn't even mind that much that we have been to socialized to shave, because obviously men have been too, and societies will always have different ideas of what is considered 'normal' personal grooming, however there are two major differences between men and women's shaving in modern society:

1. Men are expected to shave their faces and women are expected to literally rid themselves of all body hair, especially their legs, underarms, and bikini area, which is a hell of a lot more work, and

2. While men having beards aren't as common as clean shaven men today, no one freaks out and calls men with beards 'gross' or 'unhygienic' the way they do when women choose not to shave their underarms or legs.

When these two things change, maybe I will actually consider women choosing to shave as a personal choice. For now, though, it remains a practice too greatly influenced by negative societal pressure to be considered something one can independently choose to do. Sticking with the status quo is rarely something we consciously choose to do, especially not without exposure to the fact that there even is another choice.

Also, in the face of several very 'black and white' posts I have seen on radblr, I feel like I need to say this: I would be lying if I said I was not a hypocrite about these socialized standards sometimes, because it can be hard to escape from societal pressure. To the other young radfems out there, especially those of us who left liberal feminism to join the radical side, please know that it's okay if you can't wake up tomorrow and quit shaving, quit wearing makeup, quit caring about everything you have been socialized to care about for years, all at once. It might take a while and you know what? At the end of the day, I would rather young girls went out and saw some women with hairy legs and makeup, and some other women with bare faces and shaved legs, than for them to go out and see only shaved legs and makeup. So if you have given up shaving but you haven't given up eyeliner yet, don't fret about not being a "real radfem". Our job as radical feminists is about promoting liberation from men, and to do that, we have to join together as women to be supportive of one another. And if you show up to protest the Oklahoma abortion ban with lipstick on, or you spread the word that women deserve spots just for biological females and fight for that right with shaved underarms, I'm certainly not going to yell at you that you can't dare call yourself a radical feminist looking like that. There are bigger fish to fry.

Sincerely,

A radfem with hairy legs who isn't quite ready to give up her eyeliner and tinted chapstick just yet.

Why do yall make caricatures of trans women hairy and ugly af as if cis women can't be hairy and ugly too? I've seen you people. Yall look fucked up

Please make more terf poems I like reading embarrassingly bad stuff.

I just found an antivaxxer, flat earther terf on this hellsite and I am not at all surprised.

Person goes by sagittariusvibez

Terfs: TERF is a slur

Also Terfs: ///have no problem calling trans people troons and tr*nnies

Also this bullshit

Can TERFs just stop?

Please.

Leave it to a TERF to harass others just for simply existing... One of them being a minor.

The user goes by @/errordump